Magnetoencephalography study of different relationships among low- and high-frequency-band neural activities during the induction of peaceful and fearful audiovisual modalities among males and females

Abstract

Our previous study estimated the bias from the match attributes of the auditory and visual modalities related to a peaceful mood in the male brain. However, the interactions among the four main frequency bands of neural activity remain unknown. Therefore, this study uses magnetoencephalography to explore gender differences in the perceptions of auditory and visual modalities related to peaceful and fearful moods. Instead of analyzing single frequencies, this study analyzes interactions between low-frequency phase and high-frequency amplitude to reflect neural communication. The top four values in each of the 10 brain regions were averaged to give a representative value for further analysis with repeated-measures ANOVA. The results from the cross-frequency analyses suggest that delta–theta, delta–alpha, delta–beta, and delta–gamma couplings are associated with interactions between emotion and modality; theta–alpha, theta–beta, and theta–gamma couplings are associated with interactions between gender and emotion/time; alpha–beta and alpha–gamma couplings are associated with time; and beta–gamma coupling is associated with interactions between gender and modality. Although no obvious hemispheric lateralization of emotion in the macroscopic neural activity was found, these results reveal that males have stronger couplings (e.g., beta–gamma coupling) in the visual modality related to peaceful mood, whereas females have stronger couplings (e.g., beta–gamma coupling) in the audiovisual modality related to fearful mood. Gender differences become much more apparent when analysis is based on cross-frequency coupling. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.